#PRmageddon — Post-Valentine's edition

Jezebel has a great little piece about how the big flower industry took a social media beating yesterday due to disappointing product, shabby service, and often complete failure to deliver.

Ouch! FTD may want to rethink that slogan, "say it your way". It looks like their customers already have.

As the article points out, " course, Valentine's Day floral screw-ups have probably been happening for years, but now thanks to the magic of social networking, we have an up close and personal view of the epic fails all of the major online florists seem to be experiencing at the moment."

What Jez fails to mention is the phenomenal "out" this provides to all the men with disappointed (intentionally) flowerless Valentine's dates. "I ordered it from FTD" could be the new "the cheque is in the mail".



No word on whether Teleflora caused Adriana Lima's date to sleep on the couch.

Sainsbury's has the best customer service person in the world

Kerry shared this awesome find from Facebook. (It also appears on Huffington Post UK.)

Three-and-a-half-year-old consumer Lily Robinson had a question about one of UK chain store Sainsbury's store-brand food products:

Cute. But what Customer Manager Chris King wrote back should be enshrined in customer service history.

Full text:

Thanks so much for your letter. I think renaming tiger bread giraffe bread is a brilliant idea — it looks much more like the blotches on a giraffe than the stripes on a tiger, doesn't it? 

It is called tiger bread because the first baker who made it a looong time ago thought it looked sripey like a tiger. Maybe they were a bit silly. 

I really liked reading your letter so I thought I would send you a little present. I've put a £3 gift card in with this letter. If you ask your mum or dad to take you to Sainsbury's you could use it to buy some of your own tiger bread (and maybe if mum and dad say it's OK you can get some sweeties too!) Please tell an adult to wait 48 hours before using this card. 

I'm glad you wrote in to us and hope you like spending your gift card. See you in store soon. 

Yours sincerely 

Chris King (age 27 & 1/3)

And that, my friends, is how you attract customers for life. And it didn't even involve social media. (Until now.)